Subglacial water-sheet floods, drumlins and ice-sheet lobes

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Author: Shoemaker, E.M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1999
• Subjects: Earth-Surface Processes; Green Bay; Western Lake; Ice Sheet; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022143000001702; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143000001702

Abstract The effect of subglacial lakes upon ice-sheet topography and the velocity patterns of subglacial water-sheet floods is investigated. A subglacial lake in the combined Michigan–Green Bay basin, Great Lakes, North America, leads to: (1) an ice-sheet lobe in the lee of Lake Michigan; (2) a change in orientations of flood velocities across the site of a supraglacial trough aligned closely with Green Bay, in agreement with drumlin orientations; (3) low water velocities in the lee of Lake Michigan where drumlins are absent; and (4) drumlinization occurring in regions of predicted high water velocities. The extraordinary divergence of drumlin orientations near Lake Ontario is explained by the presence of subglacial lakes in the Ontario and Erie basins, along with ice-sheet displacements of up to 30 km in eastern Lake Ontario. The megagrooves on the islands in western Lake Erie are likely to be the product of the late stage of a water-sheet flood when outflow from eastern Lake Ontario was dammed by displaced ice and instead flowed westward along the Erie basin. The Finger Lakes of northern New York state, northeastern U.S.A., occur in a region of likely ice-sheet grounding where water sheets became channelized. Green Bay and Grand Traverse Bay are probably the products of erosion along paths of strongly convergent water-sheet flow.